Integrating Facebook Open Graph (formerly called Facebook Connect) is a relatively easy way to give your website a boost.
1. Promote Your Site In Your Users’ News Feeds
When a user connect his or her Facebook accounts to a site, that site can then publish information to that user’s News Feed. For example, if a user’s user’s Facebook and Yelp accounts are linked, when the user leaves a review on Yelp, that review can then be simultaneously posted to the user’s Facebook News Feed. The user’s friends will see a snippet from the review and a link to read the whole thing over on Yelp.
2. Fewer Forgotten Passwords.
The most common tech support issue on most sites is forgotten usernames and passwords. This is also a frequently cited reason for why users might abandon a website altogether. By letting users log in with their Facebook account, they are significantly less likely to have trouble logging in.
3. Lower The Barrier To Entry
Form fatigue prevents users from signing up for sites. With Open Graph, users can sign up for a site using their Facebook account. All the necessary data (including name, email address, avatar, and more) are transferred to the site they are signing up for. (If there’s any data unavailable from Facebook, the user can be prompted to enter it.) Letting users sign up with Facebook can dramatically expedite the sign up process.
4. Social Graph
With a user’s Social Graph, new sites can avoid the chick-and-egg problem of missing friend data. Instead of having to create a presence from scratch, sites can exploit a user’s existing circle of friends to populate content on the site. New sites can also promote themselves to a users entire group of Facebook friends.
5. Cleaner Data & Real User Names
By letting users sign up with Facebook instead of proprietary forms, sites can enjoy clean, structured data. Avoid messy usernames like “HotDawgLuvr1991″ or “TeaP4rty4Life” and instead display things like “Ryan M.” or other standard naming formats.
The process by which a website works with a social media API is considered as Social Media Integration at Blue Fountain Media.
I resent the implication that non-standard psuedonyms imply low-quality content. You should rethink this highly prejudicial opinion, “Ryan M.”
June 21st, 2010 at 3:59 pmGreat post. Coundn’t agree more. Facebook’s Open Graph is changing the way that interactions are the web take place. It is the future and main transportation into the world of Web 3.0 in my opinion. I think that a fully personalized web experience will add so much more value and relevance for businesses and unique users alike. So excited to be a part of it as it develops!
March 17th, 2011 at 3:11 am